I’ve been struggling to upgrade my WordPress site for some time now.
I couldn’t download plugin updates, let alone install the latest version of WordPress without using a plugin like WordPress Automatic Upgrade. That plugin throws WordPress into a fancy maintenance mode, so you can go about your upgrading business. It works well, but it’s not meant for making quick plugin upgrades.
The final straw came today, though, when after manually updating a handful of plugins, I was unable to reactivate all my recently activated plugins. I tried activating them all at once and when that failed, I went in batches and finally, one by one until almost every one was turned back on. When I finally got most of my plugins going simultaneously, I faced another conundrum—couldn’t see any content on the plugins.php page on my WordPress backend. (more…)
On Wednesday, my article “How did ThemeForest become the red headed stepchild of the WordPress community?” was published on WPCandy. Frankly, I think that the article was a success; so far, it’s received over 40 comments, including several from Envato staffers and their CEO, Collis Ta’eed, as well as comments from important WordPress community members like Justin Tadlock and Jason Schuller.
A lot of the feedback I received was positive, but more importantly, I think that I started a great discussion between Envato and many members of the WordPress community–exactly the outcome I was hoping to achieve and exactly the situation that the article noted had been missing in the past. (more…)
I like to see clients involved in the content management process early. It’s certainly best if they place their own initial content directly into WordPress, but if that’s not possible, then they should at least be editing their first draft content inside of WordPress. It’s damn-near silly to tell me what needs to be edited when the client can make the changes himself in a fraction of the time. Pushing all the content management on to us also creates very bad habits that don’t benefit anyone.
Most obviously, getting the client involved early on reduces the effort in teaching someone WordPress. I believe that WordPress doesn’t need to be taught; the clients just need to jump right in. If I empower my clients and don’t make excuses for them, I’ll usually end up with a better website and happier clients—all in a shorter time frame.
I’ve worked with both types of clients—hands on and hands off. I’ve enabled the hands-off clients myself, too and you know what happens? Clients that don’t participate early on never participate; their sites die or stagnate and they end up begrudging me for it anyway. These clients hate their websites because they don’t understand how to use them.
The clients that do get involved in WordPress early, though (either through coercion or volunteering) will never treat their sites like a leper. Plus, after they’ve spent the last year looking at their site a couple times a week, they’ll be a lot more likely to pay for a redesign (or new theme) down the road. I consider that a win for the developer, site owner and all the visitors who appreciate the site evolving over time.
….Fast forward to the end of July. They hadn’t even hit the first milestone. My project scope was insanely detailed, they even said they didn’t have many questions as it was all laid out in the spec document. The problem was, the development of even some of the basic functions was beyond their skill set, or at least that’s what it appeared to be, when they were 1 month behind schedule on a first milestone.
The above quote is from Lindsey Harper’s blog Ramblings of a Web Startup in Progress, which I found today when it was mentioned in Read/Write Web’s article, Using a Virtual Personal Assistant for Your Startup.
I’ve already subscribed to her RSS feed and added it to my favorites list because even after only three articles, I think that she is writing about some really great topics that the larger blogs aren’t diving deep enough into to sustain their readers’ interest. One of her other articles is about how to use Mechanical Turk to solicit feedback regarding your startup ideas. You should read these articles if you’re trying to get your own ideas into action mode. I’ll think that they’ll inspire you to think outside of the box on how to cheaply get your gears into motion.
As for ODesk, I’ve forced myself to use it consistently throughout 2010, so I’ve developed a few best practices (but not many).
I love ODesk’s worker quality control features (screenshots of their work!), but in all, I think that it’s a tough service to navigate for a typical hiring manager. Most of the inadequacies of the site are directly related to the complete lack of outsourcing education most of us web workers/entrepreneurs possess, though.
If I had to give one really good suggestion to better hire freelancers (ODesk or otherwise), it would be to use the Mechanical Turk model and break down your assignment in the smallest task possible.
Truth be told, complicated projects need teams of workers to succeed and freelancing sites are more suited for hiring individuals. But…if you can find a great hire who completes a small task well, then you can give him a slightly larger task, and then another, etc. If you’re really lucky, that person will begin to understand your wants and needs and would then make a great manager for a larger project, maybe even helping you hire additional team members and break down all your tasks.
I’d also like to say that when you do find a great freelancer, don’t lose him. Give him bonuses and small raises and above all else, keep the work coming (even if only five hours a week). In the long term, it’s much better to pay $50/week to staff an A+ programmer (i.e. quick, smart and communicative) than to spend dozens of hours of your time to find new freelancers for each little task.
My advice comes from a lot of fails on ODesk (and a lot of wasted time), but no matter what, don’t give up trying to outsource repetitive tasks. If you’re going to launch a company and make it sustainable, eventually, you’re going to have to relinquish responsibility for doing everything in the organization. It’s better to learn this lesson now on a small scale than to learn it the hard way later on.
